The UNO St. Claude Gallery in ̳ presents “At the Edge of Existence,” an exhibit by MFA student René Merino that opens Friday, Feb. 11. The exhibition explores the limitations and possibilities of life in a pandemic and examines the ambiguity that straddles the threshold between existence and extinction.
Merino’s thesis exhibit encompasses three distinct bodies of work:
• The Searcher's Study 2022, a room-sized installation, recreates the study room of an obsessive searcher of the ivory-billed woodpecker. The ivorybill, the Holy Grail for birders and ornithologists, is currently in the process of being declared officially extinct, though sightings persist from deep within second-growth bottomland forests in the South. Displayed on various televisions in the study is the only film ever recorded of ivory-billed woodpeckers from 1935. It was filmed in an 80,000-acre old-growth forest along the Tensas River in Louisiana, the bird’s last known refuge, which was clear-cut in the years immediately following the bird’s rediscovery there. Included in the searcher’s study are silver gelatin photographs of the Pearl River swamp and a large map pinpointing sighting locations and future search sites.
• Mardi Gras 2021 includes silver gelatin prints of a somber Mardi Gras, with hints of joyous coping, chronicling life during the pandemic. Created with a plastic camera and medium-format black and white film, the photographs preserve a snippet of a ̳ Mardi Gras unlike any before, where revelers simultaneously wear carnival masks and COVID masks, unwilling to forsake the ritual.
• World Tour 2020 includes large color photographs, originally printed as a book of postcards, depicting scenes from a journey around the world when traveling was all but forbidden due to the pandemic. The images were all created in ̳ by visiting sites named for places near and far. This grand tour starts in ̳ and stops in Havana, Hamburg, Congo and Constantinople, to name a few of the places along the way.
The exhibit opens Friday, Feb. 11 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the UNO St. Claude Gallery, 2429 St. Claude Avenue, ̳, LA. A reception will be held Saturday, Feb. 12 from 3 to 6 p.m. The show runs through March 5. Regular gallery hours are Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m.
